Brevo: Emailing and CRM all-in-one to automate your marketing

If email marketing is a crucial element for your business, you need a complete solution, Brevo is a high-end French service that is suitable for personal and professional uses.

In this Brevo review, I will give you my opinion and an overview of Sendinblue, one of the famous marketing automation solutions.

By the way, I will help you decide if this is the right choice for you, if the value for money is good through my unbiased review of Brevo from this French leader.

(2023 update)

What is Brevo (formerly Sendinblue)?

By the way, Brevo is an all-in-one French email marketing service, equipped with numerous features.

My opinion is that Brevo is a secure solution on the market, easy to use for its e-commerce functionalities or its CRM in particular.

For once, Brevo does not come from the United States market: Brevo is a great French success!

Sendinblue offers a wide range of quality features including marketing emails, e-commerce, landing pages, SMS marketing campaigns, chat, CRM, automation, Facebook ad integration, landing pages, forms, retargeting, and transactional email capability. It is an all-in-one platform that will help you develop your business through stronger relationships with your contacts.

So they created Sendinblue, this much simpler email software that can do almost as much as these business suites but requires much less time and money.

Quick overview of Brevo (ex Sendinblue)

Brevo is an email marketing tool that's even easier to use.

Brevo's main selling point is that it combines all functions that a small business like an e-commerce company needs to manage its business.

Brevo easily covers basic email functions, but also adds SMS marketing campaigns, chat, Facebook ads, and its handy CRM software.

Brevo is above Drip or ConvertKit email marketing software, because you have a quality CRM in addition to your contacts. Sendinblue brings together different marketing tools in a very consistent way to quickly manage emails, SMS, livechat and to check statistics as they happen.

Brevo is very easy to handle especially to set up a first campaign (as easy as knowing how to copy and paste) without the need for a dedicated emailing account manager for your marketing actions.

Brevo is a great choice for those looking to send emails on a large scale.

With its free version, Send up to 300 emails per day at no charge !

For additional features and higher email volumes, Brevo offers 4 premium levels that adapt to your needs.

Who is Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) for?

• Ecommerce - integrate Brevo with numerous e-commerce platforms, including Shopify, WooCommerce, and Magento, to send promotional, transactional emails, etc.
• To have access to sophisticated features of email marketing at an affordable price (good value for money, transactional emails and marketing)
• You can also store as many contacts as you want in Brevo without restrictions.
• If lead generation is a priority, you can add various fields to your opt-in forms and campaigns in Brevo.
• WordPress - The Brevo integration is popular with its users with +80,000 installations.

Features

Let's start this Brevo review with a review of the key modules Brevo offers:

• Email campaigns and newsletters
• Automation
• Ecommerce
• Social media marketing
• Up to 300 emails per day for free

Let's start with Brevo's first module - the one you're probably most interested in - sending campaigns and newsletters.

1. Campaigns

Brevo offers everything you would expect: you can create a mass of emails and send it to your contact list.

THEvisual interface and email generator are easy to use and make it easier to create your messages.

It is a quality solution that works by drag and drop and has ready-to-use blocks. The result offered by Brevo is also fully responsive.

There is also a whole library of quality models divided into a handful of categories that will help you with your strategy without requiring any expertise in handling it.

All of these emails are very pretty, making them a great base to rely on to personalize them.

There is also a section for contact management.

You can group and segment your contacts into lists, edit contacts, see engagement statistics in your newsletters, and more.

This is an important advantage, as automation is not a standard capability among other solutions on the market.

2. Email marketing automation

Brevo allows you to define triggers and emails that will be sent:

• Visiting a page on your site → sending an email
• Someone abandoned their shopping cart → email or SMS
• Someone just subscribed → welcome email
• Someone's birthday → email or SMS
• Click on a specific link on your site → email (useful for e-commerce)!

My opinion: The possibilities are endless with Brevo.

3. Marketing tools

Brevo helps you get value from your email campaigns without much effort: automate, track, and optimize the performance of your mailings.

My opinion: These quality tools offered by Brevo are one of its strengths of the platform.

Segmentation and automation

Brevo has a complete suite of segmentation options:

The numerous features include:

• Custom workflows and workflow templates
• Automation based on behavior/or a specific date
• User segmentation
• Event trigger emails

My opinion: Brevo marketing automation is not as easy to use for beginners as it is with other email marketing platforms.

Brevo only offers 3 marketing automation models.

You can start from scratch or with a selection of three marketing automation workflow templates in Brevo.

GetResponse, for his part, proposes 43.

Users found Brevo less intuitive than other software:

• Brevo isn't the most intuitive.
• Automation is capped at 2,000 contacts per month with Sendinblue (excluding Premium plans).

A/B testing

Les A/B testing allow you to optimize each email and See who gets the best engagement (not available in the free version)

Brevo is one of the only platforms that offers A/B testing for these options:

1. Sending time
2. Contents
3. Subject lines

CRM

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Brevo has an excellent customer relationship management (CRM) system integrated, which is useful for tracking interactions and providing better customer service.

That's one of the main reasons why I recommend Brevo.

Brevo CRM has great benefits and is handy for maintaining a high level of quality for your customer service by recording all interactions in your CRM.

Landing pages

Now let's take a look at Brevo's landing page creator:

Brevo landing page templates are minimalistic, well-designed, mobile-friendly, and editable by dragging and dropping.

Create more than one landing page to encourage people to sign up for your emails with Brevo (5 to 20 on the Premium plan and 20 on the Sendinblue Enterprise plan).

Automation

Brevo automation eliminates the stress of sending emails and following up with hundreds or thousands of people.

Brevo's automation function comes with three templates:

• Welcome message - If the user subscribes to your email list, they receive a welcome automation
• Abandoned cart - Useful for your e-commerce to encourage prospects to come back and buy.
• Birthday date - send an automation like an automatic message (or email/SMS) to congratulate him.

Use these workflows to change contact attributes such as marking them as “interested” in a particular product or services.

Chat

Brevo allows you to set up support on your site in real time with a chatbot 100% free of charge.

Brevo allows you to easily customize it (colors, logo, etc.)

Facebook Ads

Premium or Enterprise subscribers can launch an online advertising campaign on Facebook (Facebook Ads) without leaving Brevo.

4. E-commerce and payments

If you want to use Brevo to support your e-commerce business, here are the platforms that Brevo integrates with:

• woocommerce
• BigCommerce
• Shopify
• Elementor
• Prestashop

That doesn't mean you can't use Brevo.

5. Social networks

You can integrate content with the following social networks into your Brevo emails:

• facebook
• instagram
• twitter
• LinkedIn
• Pinterest
• youtube

If you need to integrate messages from Strava, Snapchat, or Spotify, see instead MailerLite.

6. Contact Management

• Unlimited contact storage: Add custom attributes and an unlimited number of contacts in Brevo.
• Advanced contact segmentation: Brevo allows you to group your contacts by interest, demographics, or past engagement.
• Registration form: Brevo personalization improves engagement. The creator of Brevo allows you to reflect the identity of your brand and social networks (Facebook, Instagram, etc.), email/SMS, your web pages or as a widget in your CMS.

With Brevo opt-ins, customers have the freedom to choose the type of email to receive (100% compliance with the RGPD)

CRM

Brevo CRM allows you to have a 360-degree view of your customers to understand their level of satisfaction.

This Brevo feature does not require any specific service or installation.

In Brevo, import and store all of your contact details in one place.

Shared inbox

By using Brevo CRM, you can view the history of your correspondence with all your contacts.

Multi-user access ensures that the right members of your team can receive, read, and respond to emails.

• Free and Lite: 1 user
• Premium: 3 users
• Enterprise: 10 additional users at no cost

7. Report

• Heatmap: The quality reports offered by Brevo show you which elements are the most convincing for your customers. A highlight of Brevo's services for e-retailers or those who have a blog.
• Geolocation and Devices: Brevo collects statistics through a quality report on geolocation and devices.
• Statistics on openings and clicks: Brevo provides you with an advanced report for each email campaign to analyze and improve the engagement of your customers.
• Real-time reports: Understand how different segments interact with your messages, identify pain points and strengths, and refine your overall marketing strategy over time with Brevo.

8. WhatsApp campaigns

Brevo is one of the first Meta partners for WhatsApp campaigns to send targeted messages to your audience through the messaging application.

Unlike SMS campaigns, you can personalize your WhatsApp campaigns with images, videos, attachments, and CTAs with Brevo.

Brevo is a great way to keep your customers engaged.

Multichannel access is useful at Brevo, especially for those who have a blog or e-retailers (available on all Brevo plans, but shipping costs vary by country).

9. Conversations

Multichannel contact management is possible with Brevo thanks to the Conversations app to manage messages that arrive via Livechat, SMS, FB Messenger and Instagram. This is what the Brevo interface looks like when used:

It's a great addition to Brevo for tracking and identifying leads.

Brevo also offers a Conversations mobile app, available for iOS and Android.

Brevo promises to integrate WhatsApp into this dashboard in the near future.

This feature is available in the free version of Brevo, but it's quite limited: you won't be able to connect external email apps. If you want to integrate Facebook Messenger, Instagram, or WhatsApp, you'll need to pay $15 per user in addition to your monthly subscription.

10. Brevo SMS Marketing

SMS marketing is offered in the free version of Brevo, but you'll need to buy credits.

The price Brevo offers depends on the country you send them to.

For example, sending text messages in North America will cost you €5 for 500 SMS, €10 for 1000, etc.

Note that you will be billed in euros, regardless of the country where you operate. The ability to send SMS messages with Brevo is an advantage that few platforms offer.

I compared the prices of Brevo to those of the email sending tool Omnisend and we found that they were very similar.

Brevo integrations (ex Sendinblue)

Brevo integrations are carried out through an application store.

My opinion: I like the ease with which it is possible to activate or deactivate these applications at Brevo.

I love the integrations that Brevo offers for small and large businesses natively or through their API.

Pricing

Here are the prices and the number of emails you can send with each Brevo plan:

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Brevo charges “by email sent” and not based on your number of contacts, regardless of the size of your list.

• Brevo offers a free plan: the number of 300 emails/day translates to 9000/month.

My take: If you're just starting out, this free Brevo plan might be all you need.

Customer Support

Brevo is one of the only email marketing software providers that does not offer livechat and telephone support, which means that Brevo Free or Brevo Lite users will have to make do with email support, the forum, or finding the answer in the Brevo knowledge base.

Brevo guarantees to respond to inquiries within a maximum of one business day.

My opinion: This can be frustrating for an urgent question, even if the Brevo knowledge base is good and includes very useful video tutorials.

Alternatives to Brevo

1. ActiveCampaign.

The best for personalizing email marketing automation.

ActiveCampaign provides digital marketers with automation software that simplifies the otherwise difficult task of email marketing (no expertise required).

By the way, you have a drag and drop email designer like Brevo, with the help of which you can create compelling email campaigns. These campaigns can be radically personalized to best respond to the sensitivities of a particular contact group.

The area where ActiveCampaign really outshines Brevo, however, is when it comes to reports that give a clear picture of the performance of your email campaigns.

Based on the open and click rates, you understand which campaigns are performing well and can create a strategy accordingly to get the best results from your campaigns.

Features

• Drag-and-drop email designer
• Split tests for your email marketing
• Dedicated IP address
• Pop up integration
• Google Analytics integration
• Comprehensive reports based on the database
• Email funnels
• Email autoresponders

For more information, you can read my detailed ActiveCampaign review

Pricing

• Lite plan: $9 per month
• Plus plan: $49 per month
• Pro plan: $149 per month
• Business plan: customized

You can use ActiveCampaign free for 14 days.

Visit the ActiveCampaign website

Avis

My opinion is that ActiveCampaign beats Brevo when it comes to email and landing page templates, automation, and responsive customer support. Brevo has all the same features as ActiveCampaign, but ActiveCampaign serves them better and at a more competitive price.

2. Mailchimp.

The best marketing automation tool for SMEs/PMI

Mailchimp is arguably the most popular solution on this list. Over the years, it has evolved from a simple email solution to a comprehensive marketing tool with a CRM that focuses on brand valuation.

By the way, Mailchimp introduces you to a powerful email generator that lets you create personalized, branded emails with lots of preloaded templates.

Features

• Create emails using preloaded templates and email creators.
• Perfect for e-retailers (North America) or a blog
• Use the API and SMTP to send and track transactional emails
• Real-time email analysis
• Marketing automation
• E-commerce

For more information, you can read my Detailed MailChimp Review

Pricing

• Free plan available with 2000 contacts per month
• Essential plan - $9.99 per month
• Basic plan - $14.99 per month
• Premium - $299.

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Avis

My opinion is that Mailchimp is a well-integrated, all-in-one email platform that is especially suited to small businesses, young e-commerce businesses because of its affordability and user-friendly interface.

MailChimp can easily create emails in no time. Coupled with a handful of automation features, Mailchimp is a competent tool for launching successful email campaigns that sometimes deserves better customer support, better integration with Facebook, or e-commerce functions available anywhere in the world.

3. AWeber.

The best for intuitive mail construction.

AWeber provides you with all the services you need to create professional, branded, and personalized marketing emails.

You'll have instant access to their template library to create emails, newsletters, landing pages, push notifications, and more.

You can schedule and segment your messages, target them more effectively, and organize your contact list with tags. Detailed reports and real-time analysis of your campaigns will allow you to improve them.

Features

• Drag-and-drop editor
• Tons of ready-to-use templates and stock images
• Automate email marketing
• Email segmentation

For more information, you can read my detailed AWeber review

Pricing

AWeber is an ideal email marketing software to personalize or customize your letters. Choose from multiple templates and stock images to create emails that effectively deliver the message you want.

Its affordability makes it an ideal tool for small businesses.

Rates

• Free plan: 500 subscribers
• Premium plan: $16.5 per month and unlimited subscribers.

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4. Moosend.

The best solution for creating marketing emails quickly.

Moosend is another email marketing tool with advanced automation features. The software has a drag-and-drop email editor that helps you create beautiful emails. It also allows you to perform A/B tests to determine which emails perform best.

Moosend provides real-time analytics to optimize the performance of your emails. Segment your list and send targeted messages to the right prospects with Moosend.

Features

• Drag-and-drop editor
• A/B testing
• List segmentation
• Real-time data analysis

For more information, you can read my Detailed Moosend review

Pricing

• Gratuit
• Emailings starting at $10/month for 2,000 subscribers.

DISCOVER 100% FREE Moosend

Avis

My opinion is that if you want a tool that allows you to create engaging emails quickly, then Moosend is the software for you.

Moosend also helps you with marketing actions like creating landing pages and personalizing your emails without the need for expertise.

5. GetResponse.

The best for marketing automation and email.

GetResponse is a solution that allows you to send emails, automate your marketing strategy, and create pages to promote your brand.

GetResponse has a user-friendly drag-and-drop editor, tons of templates, and images to create beautiful emails.

GetResponse focuses on deliverability by allowing you to send targeted messages to a particular segment of your contacts. You can also schedule emails to reach the customer at the right time.

The software also makes it possible to design and trigger emails based on actions in order to stimulate the engagement of prospects.

Features

• Advanced segmentation
• Drag-and-drop editor
• E-commerce features
• Email Scheduler
• Automate action-based emails

For more information, you can read my detailed GetResponse review

Pricing

• Basic: $15/month
• Plus: $49/month
• Pro: $99/month

Website: GetResponse

Avis

GetResponse simplifies the process of creating, scheduling, and sending emails in no time. The software is ideal for launching your small and large-scale emailing strategy with an impeccable deliverability rate.

A great tool for businesses in the e-commerce sector.

Very good excellent value for money for all the services and solutions offered, especially for e-retailers or for a blog.

Security

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Brevo takes security measures but forgets crucial features like 2-factor authentication and user activity tracking.

The Brevo emailing tool is also compliant with the RGPD regulations and an upgrade to an Enterprise subscription allows single sign-on.

Final Verdict

In this article, we saw how theemailing is a key element for online businesses and why Brevo is a great solution for that. With a free plan to test Brevo and comprehensive features, it's a solution for your business with an easy to use interface. An excellent quality-price ratio.

FAQs

Is the free version of Brevo better than Mailchimp at sending an email?

Mailchimp is generally more efficient than Brevo but requires more advanced expertise to get started.

Is Brevo GDPR compliant?

If you're sending an email from within the EU, you'll be happy to know that Brevo's marketing solution is fully GDPR compliant.

(learn more about the Brevo's blog)

How do I create an A/B test email campaign in Brevo?

To create an A/B test for your email campaigns, navigate to the Brevo “create a campaign” menu: specify a subject for each email, the elements to be tested, and then add the recipients.